Fahamu Pecou gained attention with his self-marketing “Fahamu Pecou is the Shit” campaign, depicting his likeness on magazines like Artforum, Flash Art and Interview. His current exhibit, Stunt’d Like My Daddy, is presumably named for the similarly titled Birdman and Lil’ Wayne song “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy,” which celebrates the…
Christian Wiman, nationally renowned poet, editor of Poetry magazine and author of The Long Home and Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet, is known for employing tightly controlled traditional techniques to explore spirituality rather than the chaotic broken-prose confessions favored by other contemporary poets. However, his insistence on starting every…
New cookbooks are OK, but there’s no beating a vintage recipe collection. The best thing I inherited from my step-grandpa was an Italian cookbook that dated to before I was born, before Weight Watchers and PETA ruined everthing. There is–no shit–a recipe for whale steak, and a “Light Meals” section…
Let me get this straight. Randy Jackson, not the Jackson brother but rather a guy who plays bass for the likes of Richard Marx, Michael Bolton and Blue Oyster Cult, is the authority on street dancing? And to help him choose the best of the pop-and-lock world, he chose J.C…
At 50 years old, Gibby Haynes, the man whose acid-fueled on- and off-stage exploits are the stuff of 1980s weirdo-rock legend, has settled into playing the familiar Butthole Surfers oldies. And, yes, he’s toured with the adolescent overachievers of Paul Green’s School of Rock. But, perhaps most surprising, despite an…
Though his status as underground legend seems to grow year after year, Devin the Dude’s record sales will probably never be as high as his own state of mind seems to be at any given moment. The man raps about weed, pussy, weed, booze, weed and the odd bout of…
The Frontier Brothers are what might have happened if the love children of Randy Newman and Stephen Malkmus were born, as the Brothers claim to have been, in the Betelgeuse planetary system, then raised in Fort Worth and transplanted to Austin. The giddily fun songs on the band’s first full-length…
Jameson Irish Whiskey’s abortion of a comedy tour somehow managed to choose the four least funny overgrown frat-boy douchebags on Earth, with Bert Kreischer leading the charge. Kreischer got his start when Rolling Stone named him the nation’s No. 1 Party Animal in 1997. He turned the publicity into a…
Patrice Oneal wonders whether condoms work. “If you’re going to fuck a bitch with a condom on, and she go, ‘Ooh, I’m so glad you got that condom on, ’cause my pussy’s a mess,’ would you still fuck her?” So why is he an occasional Fox News commentator? Perhaps because…
Conventional wisdom has it that people in Texas like things bigger, but that’s no excuse for White Castle not to at least try to sell its mini-burgers, aka “sliders,” here. After all, Krystal’s seems to be doing all right, and I’ve probably bought enough frozen White Castle products to fund…
I’m normally pretty reserved, but by the end of the night I first met Scotty “Crazy Picture Guy” Mankoff, I was wearing a papier mâché goat’s head and holding a Ouija board in one hand and a walking stick in the other at a nightclub as he took dozens of…
This year’s Austin City Limits Festival ushered out the summer concert season with performances by Beck, Erykah Badu, Spiritualized and dozens of indie rock, folk and alt-country critical darlings. And, as can be expected with a festival of ACL’s size, there were moments of brilliance, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to witness music…
Like his 2006 album The Mighty Ocean and Nine Dark Theaters, Astronautalis’ latest is a collection of stories about growing up, rebelling and dealing with adult responsibilities. But this time the central character isn’t Andy Bothwell, the guy behind the microphone and the Astronautalis name—it’s America. Bothwell extensively researched U.S…
With supporting roles in Evan Almighty, My Super Ex-Girlfriend and The New Adventures of Old Christine, comedienne Wanda Sykes has carved out a niche as the no-nonsense token black friend. She’s not quite such a stock character as a stand-up comic; one of her oldest bits illustrates a primal difference…
As a singer for collaborative bands Wolf Parade and Swan Lake, as well as his own project, Sunset Rubdown, Spencer Krug’s unique voice dominates his songs. Something of a hybrid of David Bowie’s emotive wail and Isaac Brock’s cracked yelp, it’s strong, if not necessarily confident, and always the defining…
Clint Niosi’s debut album gives the impression that the songwriter is a perpetual scholar, one who consoles himself in academia, searching history, literature and art for meaning and stability absent from the confounding outside world. Many of this album’s songs seem aimed squarely at the English lit students and recent…
This just in: Victoria Jackson is still alive. Remember her? The squeaky-voiced airhead who did handstands on Dennis Miller’s “Weekend Update’ desk? Yep, she’s back. To say she fell into obscurity after her six-season run on Saturday Night Live would be an understatement. Her celebrity status and acting career might…
It’s about 11:30 p.m., at the tail end of an interview with most of The Theater Fire crew, when a strange mechanical sound approaches from down the street. Maybe it’s the hour, or the traffic stop of an SUV that’s taking a curiously long time across the street from the…
Did you know that Chester A. Arthur spent more than three hours a day grooming his sideburns and mustache? Or that Rutherford B. Hayes gambled away fortunes on hop-frog races? Perhaps you’d be surprised to learn that Jimmy Carter was an avid prank-caller. The reason you didn’t know about these…
I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but if I hadn’t, I might not have discovered Junot Díaz. The cover of Drown, his 1996 short story collection, features a black-and-white photo of a small child walking down a dirty street at night. The image really struck me,…
For bands that last long enough to make three albums, the third is often a major turning point. American Werewolf Academy is no exception. For starters, there are the personnel changes; singer Aaron Thedford and drummer Tony Harper remain, but Jake Barnhart has replaced Noah Prikryl on bass, and former…
“We make music because of d. boon, mike watt, george hurley, and ed crawford,” read the credits on Deep Snapper’s latest CD, as if The Minutemen (and fIREHOSE) influence wasn’t obvious enough from the music. Like their heroes, the skilled musicians of Deep Snapper are adept at creating complex but…
